Mitch Rudin to exit Brookfield Office Properties

The prominent president and CEO of U.S. commercial operations at one of the city's largest landlords will be leaving at the end of June. Mr. Rudin oversaw the leasing and development of Brookfield Place in lower Manhattan.

Mitch Rudin, a top executive at Brookfield Office Properties, will be leaving the company.

Mr. Rudin has been president and CEO of U.S. commercial operations at Brookfield and has presided over some of its most important leasing and development projects, including Brookfield Place in lower Manhattan and the construction of its planned Hudson Yards complex on the West Side of Manhattan.

Employees at the company were notified by its management midweek, according to sources, that Mr. Rudin will be leaving.

After a request by Crain's for comment, Brookfield said that Mr. Rudin had accomplished much of what he had set out to do in joining the company and that, with the transition of Brookfield from a public company to a private one, his "capabilities would not be fully utilized going forward."

Last year, Brookfield announced that its biggest shareholder, Brookfield Property Partners, would buy the remaining shares at a premium and take the company private. That move may allow the company to streamline its management by shedding the substantial financial reporting duties required from a public company.

It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Rudin stepped down on his own. He did not respond to a request for comment. A person familiar with the matter said that the decision was mutual.

Mr. Rudin joined Brookfield in the summer of 2011, switching over to the firm after a long tenure as a top New York executive at the brokerage and real estate services company CBRE. According to sources, Mr. Rudin signed an employment contract with Brookfield that would keep him at the firm until 2016—and will likely now guarantee his compensation through that period.

As part of Mr. Rudin's exit, it appears his management position, the head of U.S. operations, will be shed as well. The company's management was reshuffled in 2012 when Dennis Friedrich, a longtime executive at the firm, was elevated to the position of Brookfield's CEO, and Ric Clark, who had formerly held that title, was also promoted, to chairman of the corporation's board.

A source said that Mr. Friedrich will take on much of the responsibilities that had been previously under Mr. Rudin's purview.

The health of Brookfield Properties' Manhattan portfolio has dramatically changed since Mr. Rudin's hiring. Three years ago, the company was facing millions of square feet of vacancy at Brookfield Place, the 8 million-square-foot office complex is owns just west of the World Trade Center site. Mr. Rudin's hiring appeared as a savvy move to deepen the firm's connection to the city's influential brokerage industry, which it hoped would help it fill the space.

But what appeared like a leasing crisis has since passed. Brookfield has filled virtually all that empty space and undertook a successful $200 million renovation of Brookfield Place's retail as well, elevating the stature of the property in a fast-improving downtown office market.

Mr. Rudin was Brookfield's highest paid executive in 2011, with more than $6 million in total compensation that apparently lured him to the firm, according to compensation data collected by Morningstar Inc. He was also one of the highest paid in 2012, with $2.4 million in total pay, according to the latest available Morningstar data.